News, Commentary and Insights from the Flash Player and AIR Product and Engineering Teams

Author Archive: Rob Christensen

We saw that there were some questions today related to Flash Player 10.3 support for Mac OS X Lion (10.7) related to hardware video acceleration. To avoid any more confusion, we wanted to clarify:

The final release of Mac OS X Lion (10.7) provides the same support for Flash hardware video acceleration as Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6). The previous “Known Issue” described in a tech note suggesting that video hardware acceleration was disabled in Lion was incorrect and based on tests with a pre-release version of Mac OS X Lion that related to only one particular Mac GPU configuration. We continue to work closely with Apple to provide Flash Player users with a high quality experience on Mac computers.

The developers of KIDO’Z recently released the first version of its Android application on the Android Market. If you are not familiar with KIDO’Z, the software provides a kid safe environment that allows children to surf their favorite sites, watch videos, play games, send emails, create and communicate — all without knowing how to read and write.

While the mobile application is built using the recently added Android support available in Adobe AIR 2.5, KIDO’Z was an early adopter of Adobe AIR and released its desktop application back in November of 2008. This is a terrific example of how developers can take advantage of their existing investments (skills, code, tools, design assets, and user experience) to build engaging experiences across devices. Congratulations to the team at KIDO’Z on the launch!

The tutorial covers a number of important topics including how to create a basic mobile application, using mobile item renderers, navigating and passing information between views, creating an action bar, integrating with the device capabilities (dialer, SMS, email), using a RemoteObject, and using a local SQLite database. To get started, you will need to first download the Flash Builder Burrito release from Adobe Labs.

Below is a summary of the material covered directly from the document:

In this tutorial, you use Flash Builder "Burrito" and Flex "Hero" to build a simple, yet fully functional employee directory application for Android devices. "Burrito" is the code name for the next version of Flash Builder, and "Hero" is the code name for the next version of the Flex SDK. You don’t need an Android device to complete this tutorial: you can use the simple emulator available in Flash Builder Burrito to run and debug the application. The Employee Directory application allows you to: search for employees, view employee details, navigate up and down the org chart, and call, text, and email employees.

"It turned out to be amazingly simple: I was able to run the application without changing a line of code, with a great and consistent deployment experience: You select the target platform, hit the run button, and the app is packaged, deployed, and started on the device you selected."

Below is a video demonstration by Christophe showing the application running on a Google Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Tab and the BlackBerry Playbook Emulator.

Our team is fully focused on making it as easy as possible for developers to target applications that can run across different devices from desktop computers to smart phones to tablet devices and televisions. If you are building an application and would like to let us know about it, please leave us a comment!

Today we posted a very minor update for the Adobe AIR 2.5.1 runtime that addresses a known issue related to interacting with a system’s camera on Mac systems. This is a desktop only release for the Mac; Windows and Linux users will not be impacted by this issue and will therefore not be prompted to update.

The build number for the Mac update is AIR 2.5.1.17750. We recommend that users update to the latest version of Adobe AIR.

improve the performance of your apps using techniques like object caching, GPU render mode and cacheAsBitmapMatrix

In the session, David and Renaun used several demos to support key points in their talk related to performance. In addition, the talk provides examples of how to use the Flash Builder profiler to detect problems in your applications.

In the coming weeks, I plan to spotlight several sessions from our recent Adobe MAX conference that cover the latest developments surrounding Adobe AIR.

In my first blog post in this series, I would like to encourage developers to watch the session "Introduction to Adobe AIR for Mobile" by Arno Gourdol, director of engineering for AIR. In this talk, Arno covers AIR support for the BlackBerry PlayBook, Android OS and iOS devices.

Now that Adobe MAX is officially in full-swing, I thought I would summarize some of the key announcements that are most relevant for developers building AIR apps.

Adobe AIR 2.5

For a detailed look into what’s new in AIR 2.5, please see our What’s new in Adobe AIR 2.5 article that covers the new capabilities available in the desktop, mobile and television profiles. This is a major release for developers looking to build multiscreen applications. To see an example of just how easy it is to build an Android application, please watch Lee Brimelow’s recording Publishing AIR for Android Applications where he demonstrates how to build and deploy an application to the Android market in under six minutes!

There are a number of new capabilities in AIR 2.5 desktop including support for web fonts. Thank you to our friends at TypeKit for working with us to provide support for web fonts in AIR 2.5 desktop. Please be sure to check out the blog post on the TypeKit team blog for details. In addition, Mihai Corlan, a platform evangelist at Adobe, wrote an excellent article titled Using web fonts with Adobe AIR 2.5 that explores how to take advantage of web font support to build a basic news reader desktop application using HTML and JavaScript.

Adobe announced the preview release of Flash Builder "Burrito" which includes support for developing mobile and multi-screen applications and accelerated coding for Flex and ActionScript projects. For additional information, please be sure to see product manager Andrew Shorten’s blog post What’s new in Flash Builder "Burrito".

A preview release of Flex SDK "Hero" is now available providing support for building multi-screen applications using new mobile components. For additional information, explore the article Mobile development using Adobe Flex SDK "Hero" and Flash Builder "Burrito" by Narciso Jaramillo. In addition, Deepa Subramaniam wrote a detailed article on many of the new non-mobile capabilities of the Flex SDK "Hero" release.

As part of the keynote, Adobe TV Kevin Lynch introduced Project Molehill, a set of new 3D APIs coming to Flash player and Adobe AIR. For additional information, please watch the amazing video below and also visit Adobe Labs page describing the project.

Sneak peak at upcoming 3D support coming to Flash Player and Adobe AIR.

With Adobe MAX just days away, I wanted to highlight several sessions that developers targeting Adobe AIR should not miss! Note that these sessions will be recorded, but if you are attending MAX, please be sure to sign-up while there is still room available. All of these speakers are subject matter experts on the topics they will be covering and this is a very unique opportunity to learn from the experts.

For AIR developers, it will soon be possible to extend the reach of your applications from smart phones and desktop computers to the living room. If you are innterested in learning more about the emerging TV application market, you will not want to miss the following two sessions presented by our colleagues at Samsung.

Distributing and monetizing your AIR applications to millions of Samsung Smart TVs and Internet connected devices is easy with the Samsung SDK. Explore the Samsung SDK, the Samsung Apps, integration with Adobe AIR 2.5 and the app submittal process. Also learn about valuable resources such as test centers which are available to help ensure your success.

Samsung is freeing the TV, with its Samsung Apps line of televisions and Blu-ray players, which can download, install, and run apps. Samsung Apps is built into all Samsung 2010 Blu-ray players, Blu-ray Home Theaters, and most TVs 40’’ and larger. Now distributing content to the $150 billion TV market is as easy as creating an app! And, Samsung is offering $500,000 in cash and prizes for the best looking, most brilliantly conceived, and most functional apps. At this session you’ll learn more about this app contest, the new market for TV applications, and what makes a great TV app.

Don Woodward (Adobe) and Aditya Bansod (Adobe) presented an excellent sneak peak today covering the upcoming Adobe AIR for TV sessions at MAX. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, please be sure to watch the recording of their talk.

To learn more about AIR for TV, please register for the following sessions at Adobe MAX (now less than one week away):